Yumminess

Baking is something that I love to do. Nearly all the bakery goodness that I love to bake is of the sort that I should not eat. Cakes, biscuits, breads, oh My!

Now, I am a member of Costco, den of awesome mega money-saving money-spending madness. At Costco, there can be found a variety of delicious edibles that can not be found in the run of the mill grocery store. Stuff like an amazing mixed berry whole grain artisan bread, full of virtuous grainy wholesome brown crusty goodness. It's just yummy. And we can rarely find it. That particular mixed berry loaf, I mean.

After weeks of abnormal cookiness in my kitchen, and mucho breads being baked, I decided that I wanted some of the delicious Costco artisan bread. Guess what Costco did not have.

Yeah.

 Google to the rescue!

I was determined to find a recipe for artisan bread. What I found was a beautiful recipe that made a very good base dough, which can be easily altered for a variety of flavors - I could do roasted garlic and herb, or jalapeño and cheese, or as is my current quest, a cranberry bread. I do not know which berries are in the Costco bread, so I am opting for dried cranberries to start.

I got whole wheat flour, milled flax seed, and regular flour. Then, on an unrelated trip to a Chinese market, I found a most lovely blend of whole oats and pearl barley. Beautiful and yummy! And perfect for my artisan bread. I did put the oats in the food processor to chop them a bit. There was still a very grainy appearance to the end result, as it seemed that the grains flew around the blades rather than being cut by the blades.

Oh how very nice was the dough. It was an unusual bread dough, to be sure - sticky and not easy to handle... Sticky. Still, it was brown and wholesome and had me hopping with excitement. When my first loaf came out of the oven, I thumped its bottom side, and hollow it sounded. Yay!

It was just so... I do love to bake. Love it!

The bread was tasty and toasty and nutty and home baked Yumminess.

Versatile, and requires no kneading, by the way. Yes, I will share with you where I found the recipe. It's called Fantastic Fearless Five Minute Bread...  And really, Mixing it did take only five minutes. If you wanted to get a little froggy and pre-mix your flours, you'd probably be able to shave a couple minutes off the mixing time. Of course, rising, resting, and cooking all take longer than five minutes. Believe me, it seems like forEVER when you're eagerly awaiting this Yumminess.

It's worth the wait, though.

Yumminess.